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Badge of the special forces command on a beret (archive image)
Photo: Patrick Seeger / dpa
Because of the ammunition affair at the Bundeswehr special unit Command Special Forces (KSK), the investigators are targeting the commander, Brigadier General Markus Kreitmayr.
According to SPIEGEL information, the Tübingen public prosecutor's office confiscated Kreitmayr's work phone and tablet on Friday following a court order.
The defense department informed the members of the defense committee on Monday about the executive action of the civil investigators.
According to this, police officers confiscated the communications equipment of the KSK boss on behalf of the public prosecutor.
State Secretary Gerd Hoofe said in the confidential meeting that cell phones and tablets are now being evaluated by Bundeswehr experts and the Baden-Württemberg State Criminal Police Office.
The military department CERTBw, the Bundeswehr's Computer Emergency Response Team, is also involved.
The uniformed hackers can also restore deleted files and communications on cell phones.
The background to the investigations by the public prosecutor's office is a collection campaign of ammunition at the KSK site in Calw in Baden-Württemberg in spring 2020. At that time, soldiers were able to return ammunition with impunity that they had not given in the years before after target practice or stolen on other occasions.
At the end of the operation, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition were collected.
Two live hand grenades were also released at that time.
The fact that Kreitmayr ordered the action without authorization is a clear breach of the existing regulations, since every loss of ammunition in the Bundeswehr has to be meticulously determined.
In addition, Kreitmayr should not have offered his soldiers that they could hand in the stolen ammunition with impunity, since every theft must also be disciplined and punished.
The KSK boss has already admitted to internal interrogations that ordered illegal amnesty actions.
According to his account, it was initially a matter of averting an impending danger from the stolen ammunition.
This representation also caught on with his superiors, who, in contrast to the civil prosecutor's office, only very slowly investigated the case for months.
The public prosecutor's office in Tübingen is investigating the initial suspicion of a violation of Section 40 of the Military Penal Act, as the Chief Public Prosecutor Matthias Grundke had declared at the beginning of April.
This is comparable to the criminal offense of obstruction of punishment.
Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also initiated preliminary investigations into disciplinary proceedings in March because of the allegations against Kreitmayr.
Despite the allegations, Kramp-Karrenbauer does not want to recall the controversial general from his post during the ongoing investigation.
Normally, officers are given at least a leave of absence or temporarily transferred to another post at the latest when civil investigations are initiated.
But the minister argues that Kreitmayr is too important for the ongoing reform of the KSK.
Sharp criticism from the opposition
The FDP doubted that the minister herself did not know anything about the ammunition collection.
Defense politician Annegret Strack-Zimmermann demanded access to the records of the minister's adjutant as well as so-called speech slips, which must be available in the ministry's management staff, as she said.
The ministry refused, according to participants in the meeting.
To this day, the minister insists that she did not find out about the controversial collection campaign through the media until February 2021, even though she spoke several times with Kreitmayr himself and his superiors about the problems with ammunition management at the KSK location in Calw in the early summer of 2020.
During the special meeting of the Defense Committee on Monday, according to SPIEGEL information, some new irregularities at the KSK became known.
For example, the defense department admitted that the commanders of the KSK had for years awarded larger orders for exercises in the desert of Namibia to a former KSK comrade without a tender.
In total, the former warrior in command, who offers such training on his parents' farm in Africa, landed orders for around 650,000 euros over several years.
The KSK's desert trips were uncovered a few months ago through research by ARD and SPIEGEL. Since then, the examiners in the ministry have found that there was no correct tender for the driver training courses in the desert or that the requirements were set by the KSK in such a way that only the former comrade could be considered as a contractor. The commando soldier was also noticed in other investigations as a contact person for right-wing extremists within the commando unit, who have now been recognized.
As a result of the new revelations, Kramp-Karrenbauer will now face further special meetings of the Defense Committee.
Both the Greens and the FDP are now threatening to set up a committee of inquiry to clarify the allegations in detail.
The minister must therefore testify again at the regular meeting of the Defense Committee on the subject of the KSK by next Wednesday at the latest.
fek / mgb / dpa
